An Aerial Pickup Truck

Antique Plane Safe, Vims's Pilot Says

September 04, 1997|By RICHARD STRADLING Daily Press

Some passengers are a little uneasy when they step out on an airport tarmac and see the Beaver for the first time.

The plane, owned by the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, rolled out of a Canadian factory in 1954. But even before people know its age, they know the plane looks old, like a DeSoto or a Cadillac with fins.

The sight of the Beaver prompted one first-time passenger to say to another this summer, ``I hope your life insurance is paid up.''

Sam White has heard the nervous jokes before. But as the Beaver's pilot for 21 years, White knows that a ride usually settles people down.

``Initially, people are skeptical of the airplane, because it's obviously an old design,'' he said. ``But after they see how comfortable it is, they usually change their minds.''

As for safety, White says driving on Jefferson Avenue is much more dangerous than flying the Beaver.

The VIMS Beaver appears at antique air shows every now and then, but the plane's working days are far from over. Scientists both at the institute and beyond use it for photography, remote sensing, mapping and reconnaissance. Also, they occasionally use it to move something big, like a sea turtle or the head of a beached pilot whale.

Nearly every year, someone at VIMS suggests getting rid of the Beaver to save money. And every year, institute officials conclude that they would have a hard time living without it.

``It's a versatile thing,'' said VIMS Director Don Wright. ``There's no way you can do with a Cessna what we do with this.''

The Beaver offers scientists two advantages over newer airplanes: It's big for a single-engine plane, and it's slow.

The bigness means it can carry a lot of equipment, and the slowness means it can creep along like the smallest Cessna. With a minimum air speed of 45 mph, scientists have a better chance of getting a good photograph or spotting a school of fish.

``If you lost power, you'd be going slow enough that you could probably step out of the plane before it crashed,'' said VIMS wetlands scientist Carl Hirschner.

An exaggeration, perhaps. But White isn't kidding when he says that if he had to put the Beaver ``in the trees,'' he'd probably walk away with only a few scratches from the bark on the climb down.

Most of White's close calls in the Beaver involve incidents with other planes, usually fast-moving military jets going in and out of Hampton Roads. The Beaver is often criss-crossing Chesapeake Bay a mere 500 feet in the air, and even at top speed isn't going any faster than 135 mph.

``It's sort of like a turtle crossing a busy highway,'' White said. ``We have to be pretty careful.''

The Beaver is essentially an aerial pickup truck, White said. De Havilland Aircraft of Canada Ltd. designed the first one in 1947 as a bush plane, to haul people and cargo to remote, rugged locations. It can take off and land with a minimal amount of runway and could easily be adapted to land on water, ice or snow, said Colin Fisher, spokesman for de Havilland, now a subsidiary of Bombardier Inc., in Toronto.

``It's almost runway optional,'' Fisher said. ``It did a great deal to open up the Canadian north country, where runways, if they existed at all, were rudimentary.''

In fact, the Beaver did so much to change Canada that in 1987 a national organization of engineers named the plane one of the top 10 outstanding achievements in Canadian engineering during the previous century, along with the St. Lawrence Seaway and the trans-Canadian railway.

De Havilland, which now only makes Dash commuter airliners, hasn't built a new Beaver since 1967, Fisher said. But some 600 of the 1,631 built are still in the air, Fisher said. They are particularly popular in the terrain they were built for in Canada and Alaska, said White.

``They use de Havilland Beavers like we use taxicabs,'' he said.

Before it built the first Beaver, de Havilland surveyed Canadian bush pilots to find out what they wanted in an airplane. The Beaver reflects their suggestions, with doors big enough to handle a 55-gallon drum and fuel tanks in the fuselage rather than the wings, so pilots don't need to climb an icy ladder to refuel, White said.

The 450-horsepower Pratt and Whitney engine that powers the Beaver hasn't been manufactured since World War II, White said. De Havilland used some of the thousands of new ones that were left over after the war, he said. Today, several companies rebuild the engines, and VIMS has replaced its Pratt and Whitney five or six times, White said.

The VIMS Beaver has its original cockpit instruments, in addition to a modern radio and radar system. The plane is so loud inside that passengers must wear headphones and speak to each other through microphones.

``You get used to it,'' Hirschner said. ``It holds down the pointless conversation.''